Online Ring Lecture: "Digital Society - A Design Challenge".

Digitization is already deeply rooted in our society. Making people aware of the processes behind it and looking at the associated opportunities and risks - that is the aim of the annual ITeG Ring Lecture. Artificial intelligence can improve the way we live and work or help us deal with unforeseen challenges such as the Corona pandemic. At the same time, we are becoming more and more dependent on algorithms that can also produce unfair, biased decisions. With the help of Big Data, we can expand ways in which citizens can directly participate and engage in democratic processes, and at the same time ... democracy seems to be in jeopardy.

In the ITeG Ring Lecture, internationally renowned guest speakers from different disciplines such as computer science, social and human sciences or integrative research approaches will present different facets and design options in our digital society.

The lecture series will be opened on November 11, 2020 by Professor Dr. Antonio Fernández Anta from IMDEA Networks Institute Madrid, Spain. He will present an innovative method for measuring Covid-19 incidence launched in Spain in mid-March - data on COVID-19 cases are collected via anonymous open surveys. The title of his presentation is "Corona Surveys: Using Indirect Reporting to Estimate the Incidence of Epidemics."

Neema Iyer is founder and CEO of POLLICY, a civilian technology company based in Kampala, Uganda. POLLICY uses data, design, and technology to improve the way citizens/government can engage together to deliver public services. She will share insights into her work and present on "Creating an (Afro)Feminist Internet" on December 2, 2020.

Professor Dr. Dirk Helbing is Professor of Computational Social Science at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences at the Computer Science Department of ETH Zurich. He is a member of the working group "Digitization and Democracy" in LEOPOLDINA, the National Academy of Sciences. On January 27, 2021, he will discuss the challenges for the relationship between digitization and democracy in his lecture "Digital revolution: danger and opportunities for democracy". For organizational reasons, this lecture will not begin until 6 pm.

Professor Michael Bernstein, Ph. D., of Stanford University will describe the various directions he sees ahead for the future of work in the digital society at the intersection of technology and politics. His research focuses on the design of social computing and crowdsourcing systems. On February 10, 2021, he will lecture on "Computation and Organization: the Future of Work and Worker."

Professor Dr. Georg von Krogh will conclude the series on March 3, 2021, with his talk on "AI in Organizations." At ETH Zurich, he holds the Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation. In the field of management and organizational sciences, Georg von Krogh specializes in competitive strategy, digital innovation and organizational knowledge.
For more information about the lecture series and detailed information on how to participate in the online meetings, please visit our website: www.uni-kassel.de/go/iteg-lectures.

Organizer:
Prof. Dr. Matthias Soellner
University of Kassel
Scientific Center for Information Technology Design (ITeG)
www.iteg.uni-kassel.de